Friday, June 05, 2015

FIORINA IS NO MORE DELUSIONAL THAN MOST OF THE GOP FIELD

Liz Mair, who worked on Carly Fiorina's California Senate campaign, argues at the Daily Beast that it's sexist and unfair to say that Fiorina is really running for vice president:

Political devotees and insiders all seem convinced that Carly Fiorina is only running for vice president. Big-donor types say it. Consultants say it. Members of the media say it. Grassroots activists say it. Republicans of all stripes, and all kinds of people who cover them and opine on them, say it.

And they’re all wrong.

The widespread idea that Carly has set her sights on the VP slot is both irritating and eyebrow raising, especially when it’s voiced by women’s-advancement-oriented female devotees of the word “feminism.”

... in countless conversations about her and the field at large, I have yet to hear a single person say of any male candidate that they are “only running for vice president.”

I agree with Mair: It's sexist to argue that Fiorina's delusions are any different from those of Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, or anyone else who's running despite being, like her, at 1% or 2% at the polls.

But that doesn't mean she's a plausible nominee. Mair insists that she is plausible, in part for this reason:

... more than any other actual or prospective candidate, she is focusing her energy and her firepower on the woman everyone expects to be the actual Democratic nominee -- Hillary Clinton....

Carly is the only Republican consistently, day in and day out, showing that she can take the fight to Hillary, which of course will be one of the nominee’s central tasks.

Yes, but Fiorina doesn't seem to be doing anything else. She doesn't seem to want to be president of the United States -- it looks as if she wants to be President of HillarySucksistan.

My first impression of her campaign wasn't that it was a campaign for president or vice president -- it was that, as a candidate, she's like the one female member of a rich accused rapist's defense dream team, the attorney whose principal role is to do a really vicious cross-examination of the victim, because that would come of as sexist if a man did it.

That seems to be what Republican insiders see as useful in her campaign. Fiorina may have bigger ambitions -- but she's campaigning as if she's no more than a role-player. Does she have a vision larger than "Hillary is the Antichrist"? If so, we never see it. Then again, I don't know what the hell Jeb Bush's vision is, except "It's my turn now." So she's just as implausible a president as he is, and just as implausible as most of the males in the field.

It's amazing to me how quickly Conservatives reach for the victimhood card these days. For 30 years, that was their main line of attack on Liberals. So poor Carly is a victim of sexism in the media. That must be why California, with two Female senators, won't elect her as dog catcher. Statistics say that women are paid only 77% of what men make. According to recent news however, women who worked for Carly Fiorina were paid nothing at all. How sexist is that?

I assume Fiorins is running for the same reason the other GOP clowns are. To raise her profile, increase her speaking fees, maybe sell some books. None if them can possibly think they can win, running for president has just become another grift for the GOP.

There's also the point that politically, Fiorina has been a staggeringly bad candidate, with no political success or experience to show. Barring the ludicrous Trump, who appears to intend to run *solely* as a grifting/egoboo opportunity, the other republican hopefuls have at least some past political success to point to, giving them at least a slight patina of plausibility.